Your first chase?

[Jeff Snyder]

My first real chase (other than a very local "drive to see a severe-warned storm") was on August 9, 1999 in southern Minnesota. My best friend and I took a short drive from the Twin Cities down to Mankato, where we waited a bit before initiation occurred to our north. We ended up tracking a supercell from near the Minnesota River north of Mankato to US52 near Rochester. My memory is fading a bit since that was nearly 17 years ago (wow -- can't believe it's been that long!), but I think we saw something like 5 or 6 tornadoes that day -- my first 5/6 tornadoes.

This chase is up there in the Top 10 of my most memorable chases (alongside 7/14/2003, 5/12/2004, 5/22/2004, 6/12/2004, 6/13/2007, 5/29/2008, 6/17/2009, 5/24/2011, and 5/31/13)

Stills from my parents' 8 mm camcorder that I used in 1999 and 2000:

 

[Tim Walsh]

My first real chase WILL BE coming up this May. I took the first 2 weeks off and will drive out from Savannah when it looks like it will be active...and hopefully it will.
I have done a lot of local chasing here in Georgia and in New England where I grew up but at age 48 its finally time I head out to the mid west.
I too have very little forecasting knowledge but I do have good software like GR LevelX to assist me in finding the right storm to chase. I will rely on this website and the weather channel for at least predicting the target area.

I am going to dig into some of the forecasting resources here in this site before I go and I also have the Meteorology Today book, but I don't expect to get much right away. The stuff I hear you guys say and the knowledge you have is amazing. I have been a storm nut since I was 6 but only have the knowledge I got from my own experiences or from the weather channel and chasing shows on TV.

Wish me luck. I'm totally psyched and honestly don't expect to see a tornado, but the experience will be awesome.